Why am I receiving bounce-back messages for emails that I didn't send?... John in Durango
Dear John,
This is a question we're getting a lot lately! What you are experiencing in your email is the result of a common spamming activity called 'spoofing'. Spammers harvest vast numbers of email addresses, or even guess common email addresses, and then put these addresses in the "To:" and the "From:" fields of the millions of email messages they send out. Many of the messages they send will end up bouncing, and when they do, they bounce to the forged address in the "From:" field, which may be yours.
While this may seem like a serious matter, be assured that it is not a major cause for concern. It is true that spammers can easily forge the headers of the messages they send, making it appear as though they originated elsewhere, but they are not gaining access to your email account in any way nor is your personal information at risk. Spammers will spoof email addresses for a brief time and then move on to other addresses, you should see your email activity return to normal very soon.
There are also viruses, such as Klez and Sobig, which spoof the sender's address. An infected computer sends out infected messages and puts addresses in the "To:" and "From:" fields that it finds somewhere on the infected computer (the email addresses it finds don't have to be in the contacts lists of the email program, but could even be, for example, in a stored document or cached web page). Again, if the "To:" address doesn't work, the message bounces, but it bounces back to the "From:"
address, which may be yours.
To make sure that your computer is not infected, we recommend that you keep your antivirus software updated daily and scan your computer periodically. If you find no viruses, then you can assume that your email address was spoofed.
There is unfortunately very little that can be done about spoofing, the only way to trace back to the spammer or the infected computer is by investigating the full headers of the original message sent (not the bounced message), and only the receiver of the original message can enable those headers. The receiver in many of these "bounced email" cases is the automatic mailer from the domain of the non-working address that was in the "To:" field. Normally, these automatic "bounced email" messages do not contain the full headers of the original message sent. You could try to contact the organization whose automatic mailer sent you the bounce message and ask for the full headers, but this takes a lot of effort and isn't usually successful.
Brainstorm's spam filtering servers already catch an enormous amount of junk mail before you ever see it, but trying to filter out these email bounce messages is risky, there is no way to really determine if the bounces are legitimate or not. Unfortunately, until there are more sophisticated methods and enforceable legislation in place to deter spamming activity, it will probably continue to be an aspect of normal life on the Internet that will all continue to deal with.
As
always, thank you for choosing Brainstorm Internet. It is our
pleasure to serve you and we will
continue striving for new ways
to improve your Internet experience. If there is a specific tech
support related topic that you would like us to address in our
weekly tech tip we welcome and invite you to email
us your suggestion.
Your
Brainstorm Internet Team
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